#MeToo : Director of Symbiosis college Anupam Siddhartha sent on leave

PUNE : NPNEWS NETWORK – Taking a firm stand on allegations of harassment and misconduct against Symbiosis Centre for Media and Communication (SCMC) director Anupam Siddhartha, the Symbiosis society has asked him not to come to the college and sent him on leave pending enquiry against him.

Vidya Yeravdekar, the principal director of Symbiosis Society, confirmed the development.

Over 100 students have signed a petition which was sent to the Bhama Venkataramani, dean, academic and administration, at Symbiosis International University, demanding action against Siddhartha including his removal from the post of director of SCMC.
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Siddhartha refused to comment saying the matter is sub-judice.

Earlier, many present and former students of SCMC complained of harassment at the institute on different social media sites. While in some cases the offenders were fellow students, certain faculty members, too, were accused. There have also been allegations of students being harassed at their place of internship and the college not taking their complaints seriously.

There are two broad issues that students sought attention to:

● His abusive behaviour towards students as an effect of his threatening abuse of power and position

● The other, is his complacency with regard to complaints by students pertaining issues of sexual harassment and misconduct by other students, faculty and admin staff of SCMC thus further normalising aforementioned atmosphere students.
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Excerpts from the petition of the former and current students of SCMC –

1) One of his most inconsiderate and demeaning habits has been to strip his students of every dignity possible and manipulate them into feeling shame, guilt and fear constantly. He has told (female) students that ‘he will hold them by their hair, and drag them out of the college campus’; ‘(wrongly) tell the parents of the student(s) that they are sexually active’; ‘that he will cut their hair in public for not tying it up’ etc.

He has, on instances, threatened to publicly strip students of their clothes for something as menial as having worn the wrong uniform on the wrong day. As per one of the petitioner’s testimonials, Anupam Siddhartha made the student go to each classroom and talk about how he was stripped to his underwear by the Director himself for not adhering to the rules, an experience which was extremely humiliating and shaming for him publicly. “It is also to be noted here that Anupam Siddhartha has consistently made unnecessary remarks on students’ attires, sense of aesthetics and their body language. From ‘why are you wearing red lipstick today, are you going to kiss someone?’ to ‘I will drill the word sissy into your head if you do not get a haircut’, he has stigmatized students for possible sexual activities (based only on their choice of lipstick, shirts, pants, hairstyles) and also promoted toxic masculinities on campus. We believe that such sexist and gendered comments from him are one of the important reasons why slut-shaming, bullying and sexual harassment have been normalised and internalised in SCMC, Pune. Though we understand that reprimanding students for not adhering to dress codes is a significant role which he has to abide by as administrator, we highly condemn Anupam Siddhartha’s methods of going about the same.”

2) Apart from regularly using detrimental language, he is also infamously known to punish students in harmful manners. “Most of us have been on the receiving end of such punishments by Anupam Siddhartha, some of which are: making students run around the football ground under the afternoon sun, threatening to throw someone’s laptop from the 5th floor, bar someone from using the washroom during an hour-long class, make an entire class of students run up and down 5 floors, make a student stand under the sun for 3 days in a row (without a break for food/loo/etc), etc.

a) A student recounts that Anupam Siddhartha had aggressively snatched their answer sheet away, implying that he will not allow them to continue writing the exam (for wearing ripped jeans to college, which was against the dress code) during a backlog exam, and only returned it after mocking the student’s incapability to pass the exam. As the student was already diagnosed with depression and had just shifted to India, this incident further took a toll on their mental health and confidence to survive in a new country (and its comparatively new education system).”

“We understand Anupam Siddhartha’s need to admonish a student for breaking college rules, but believe that he should have been equipped to deal sensitively with an international student who was evidently having difficulties adjusting to the new education system (the student had many backlogs in that first year of college). Especially since Symbiosis University prides itself for being a safe and comfortable space for international students, this is the least we, as students expect from the college.”

“In a country where corporal punishment has been banned for almost 18 years now, Anupam Siddhartha seems to have found other equally disrespectful and vulgar ways to “discipline” his students. He is also known to manipulate his students by psychological means into doubting their own sanity and skills, by spreading extreme fear throughout campus. This was a fear of speaking up, of opposing his ideas, of not being ‘good enough’ for him as a student.

3) On a related note, he has also been heard telling his students that nobody except him is allowed to rag them in college. Needless to point out, the IPC and UGC have clearly laid down rules and legislated ragging activities at universities as illegal, criminal as they are detrimental to the students’ psychosocial health (2009). The Anti-Ragging affidavit is an important agreement which is signed by students as a part of their registration contract with the university. SIU especially, is held in high regard by its national and international students and their parents to follow through on its promise to support the anti-ragging bill. How then, Director Anupam Siddhartha so unabashedly claims that he has the right to ‘rag’?”
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This may seem humorous, and was possibly taken so by the many parents and students attending their orientation, yet, this is also the fundamental problem regarding his relationship with his students. (If documented, a video of him stating this could be found during his orientation talk for batches 2015 and 2016 as known so far). From the testimonials collected and from our own experiences of studying under him, we agree to the fact that Anupam Siddhartha has often ragged and bullied his students to the point of public humiliation under the pretext of discipline and teaching them. Though such actions and behavior may seem only theatrical, they have caused a lot of trauma to his students who were then too young and susceptible to such abuse.

In another such (anonymous but verifiable incident), a student and his father were publicly humiliated and made to apologise in front of the entire batch because the student fell asleep in class and was threatened by Anupam Siddhartha to be rusticated unless he got his father to the institute to meet the director.

4) He has promoted a culture of misogyny in college by making his students believe that emotional, physical and sexual harassment is fundamental to working in the Indian media. This can be evident from his inaction over multiplace grievances of workplace harassment and harassment by faculty.

a) A student has testified to this saying, “(I) was harassed on a movie set I was sent to by college. I had called him up from the set, asked him what to do, had to flee the scene in utter confusion and horror all alone, and on meeting with Anupam Siddhartha after returning to the college, he casually brushed aside the matter and did not call and reprimand the perpetrators like he should have”.

b) Apart from workplace harassment, Anupam Siddhartha has also failed to take any action against professors accused of sexual harassment. Two faculty members, Mr. Suhas Ghatne and Mr. Vijay Shelar have been accused of sexual misconduct on campus. Though these incidents have come up in the light of #metoo, we have testimonials of students who agreed to have complained to Anupam Siddhartha about these professors many years ago. In one testimonial, a student recounts that Anupam Siddhartha had dismissed the (female) student’s complaints against Mr. Vijay Shelar by saying “When have you ever acted like a girl, to deserve to be treated as one?”

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